Sometimes when watching videos on effective ways of public transport and trams come up, I get a bit annoyed at people not addressing the fact that they seem to share the road with cars. Why do people twerk for trams so much as a form of light rail if they share the road with cars and are subject to being affected by traffic? Doesn’t that just make them rail buses without their own bus lane? Doesn’t that make them more obsolete? Why do people like them so much?
Edit: Also, does anyone have any resources about the cost to benefit ratio of different intratown/city forms of transport (bike lanes, BRT, trams and other forms of light rail, subways etc)? Would be much appreciated.
Trams do not have to share the road with cars. They can have (and often do have) their own dedicated right of way.
In those situations the tram only really interacts with cars on intersections, similar to level crossings for rail.
I think it’s more helpful to see a tram as an upgrade on a bus, rather than a downgrade on rail.
The main advantages of trams over busses are the increased capacity, and increased efficiency (less fuel, fewer drivers per passenger needed)
And even at intersections they usually are given priority over cars.
Yeah this makes sense. I come from a country that doesn’t have many trams and when I do see them they tend to be interacting with the road which is probably where my perception comes from.
Definitions are loose but generally a tram is defined as sharing the road with cars, aka streetcar in North America. If it has its own dedicated right of way, then it’s a light rail. Light rail can be separated all the way to a metro system if you want. (I think we shouldn’t use the term tram at all, use streetcar which is self explanatory or light rail to mean dedicated right of way.)